I fully agree with what you wrote (mark that day in your calendars ladies and gentlemen )

As someone playing a lot on pc I'm still bewildered by seeing so much which has already been done on pc's as new and innovative. F2P, MMO shooters/rpg, seamless digital distribution, draconian drm measures are all things that have been loved, hated, enjoyed and endured for quite some time. But MS failed to learn from e.g. ubisofts always-on drm debacle (u-play - the always-on requirement of which they dropped), from their own failings with GfWL and from what Valve did right with steam. And no one seems to notice the existence of gog.com, which does quite well with drm free distribution, indie bundles which offer tremendous value due to 'pay what you want', or that greenmangaming.com already offers digital trade-ins and works like an online rental.

While Sony was concentrating on the positives and glossed over the fact that online play will cost a monthly fee with the PS4, MS was deliberately vague and left plenty of room for the worst possible interpretation. I am puzzled by how this company can mess up its communication so badly. At some point during E3 I felt a disturbance in the force, as if a million PR advisers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. There are some quite smart people at MS, but from their E3 showing you wouldn't believe that. I'm also a bit disappointed with the u turn, since it shows to me that they didn't believe in their own vision for the future of console gaming. Why else would they not finally start talking sensibly about what xbox one brings to the table (apart from switching to live television, something my remote control can do)?

What do we have now? Two boxes with roughly similar specs based on regular pc's, roughly similar online and offline capabilities, roughly similar controllers (the new dualshock looks like it's growing towards xbox-size while the xbox controller seems to shrink with each iteration), roughly similar games libraries... the only thing separating them are the exclusive games and when it comes to exclusives both next gen consoles pale next to the PS3 in my opinion.

I'm watching and waiting, never been an early adopter with game consoles (I might also wait for 'slim' versions of the next-gen models) and nothing of this next generation is likely to change my mentality. Especially since the games I'm looking forward the most next year are coming out on pc and/or ps3 anyway.